New director Denise Lebica is hopeful she will experience “a unique museum that will strike a chord with all our visitors.”

“Museum audiences have been changing over time. Now they’re looking to experience something to do and touch,” she said recently. “We want to make this museum and the crafts it exhibits accessible to all.”

Lebica might have been describing “Grounds for Play,” an ongoing exhibit of 24 eclectic sculptures made from clay, stone glass and scrap metal displayed in the museum’s open-air courtyards, on the shore and in the water of an adjacent pond and throughout its 22 wooded acres.

Subtitled “Sculptures That Excite the Imagination,” the show includes Hopkinton artist Michael Alfano’s intriguing 4-by-4-by-4-foot sculpture, Cubed, a face of pigmented resin, Madeleine Lord’s life-sized scrap metal Rocker and a 12-foot tall stainless steel piece by the late Wayland artist David Lang titled The Question is the Answer.

Or, Lebica could be referring to “Playtime in the Making” and “FORTitude: The Art of Play,” two inventive installations, designed to prompt young visitors to have fun while thinking creatively.

Visitor Kristen Cornwall encouraged her young daughters, Brooklyn and Dahlia, to discover connections in puzzles created by four artists that aim to teach them “the more you look, the more you see.”

“I love that there’s so many interactive exhibits for them to play with and learn from,” said the Stoughton resident who got married at the museum in 2011. “And there’s things for them to do indoors and outdoors.”

For 9-year-old Noah Gardner, the multimedia installation “FORTitude” provided hands-on fun as he assembled a miniature house while relaxing with his mentor, Henry Jolimeau, of Mass. Mentoring Partnership. “I like learning cool stuff here,” he said. “Everything is interesting.”

Located in Brockton next to D.W. Field Park, the 49-year-old institution is the only craft museum in New England.

Lebica was appointed director last October after serving as deputy and interim director since 2014 and 2017, respectively.

A watercolorist and textile artisan with more than 30 years of museum and nonprofit experience, she believes the Fuller should exhibit “the leading edge of crafts” and the artisans who make them while exploring their aesthetic and social impacts.

With annual attendance stable at 18,000 visitors for several years, she is working to strengthen the FCM’s “regional” appeal by developing partnerships with other institutions and programs and exhibits that “impact visitors’ lives in ways they can take away with them.”

As the Fuller approaches its 50th anniversary next year, Lebica played a key role forging a strategic plan to revitalize the museum by, among other things, expanding the accessibility and awareness for a growing audience and developing programs that “foster a greater understanding of crafts.”

With seven galleries that hold between 15 and 17 new exhibits a year, the Fuller has become “a destination museum” that offers something new for visitors every few months, she said.

“We want to develop a new perspective that has a positive impact on our guest experience,” Lebica said.

Looking ahead, Lebica expects an ambitious exhibit opening this fall, “Uneasy Beauty: Discomfort in Contemporary Adornment,” will feature stunning art that will reflect the museum’s mission of advancing the definition of craft.

It will feature 75 examples of cutting-edge contemporary jewelry and costumes that showcase the power of what we wear to shape our identities.

These works by 46 regional and national artists will explore “the outer limits of comfort” through objects the irritate the skin, constrict movement and jangle sensitive cultural nerves.

Visitors will see necklaces of metallic insects that look like they escaped a terrarium, a dress made from meat once modeled by Lady Gaga, a bodice decorated with human hair and much more.

As part of the statewide collaboration “Mass Fashion” organized by eight cultural institutions, including the Fuller, Lebica expects the provocative exhibit will examine the “undercurrents of unease” that seem to be afflicting the nation.

Lebica believes a powerful exhibit now in the works, “Human Impact: Stories of the Opioid Epidemic,” will demonstrate the crucial role artists can play exploring a national health crisis and stimulating public discourse in positive ways.

She said craft and material-based artists have already been selected from a general call to meet with individuals and families affected by the epidemic to create original work to be exhibited next year at the Fuller.

Created in partnership with Brockton Hospital, the Plymouth County District Attorney’s office, Stonehill College, High Point Treatment Center and Quincy College, the exhibit will “bring to light the epidemic’s impact and de-stigmatize the people it affects,” Lebica said.

Lebica believes those three very different exhibits of sculptures, challenging fashions and art inspired by the opioid crisis “speak to what we’re trying to do at Fuller Craft Museum.”

“... We’re primed to give those issues a voice and a chance to represent everything that is contemporary,” she said. “As New England’s only craft museum, we want to get the word out about what a special place we are.”

Editor's Note: This story has been updated to remove a sentence that incorrectly quoted Fuller Craft Museum Director Denise Lebica.

"Grounds for Play: Sculpture That Excite the Imagination"

WHERE: Fuller Craft Museum, 455 Oak St., Brockton

WHEN: Through Oct. 21.

"Playtime in the Making" and "FORTitude: The Art of Play," run through Sept. 16